The Dalai Lama’s visit with Obama and the future of US-China relations

In the first video CrossTalk on Dalai Lama: CIA monk exposed, Webster Tarpley joins Andrew Leung in London and host Peter Lavelle in Moscow to evaluate the role of the Dalai Lama and the current and future trends of the US-China bilateral relationship. Crosstalk will be broadcast numerous times today Friday Feb. 19 on Russia Today.

In the second video US-China relations could get worse, Tarpley provides a wrap-up of the Dalai Lama’s visit with an estimate of possible consequences, including the likely radicalization of the succession process inside the Communist Party of China, where successors to President Hu JIntao and Prime Minister Wen JIabao are due to be selected at the XVIII Congress in the fall of 2012.

Two factions can be thought of as contending for leadership. These are the elitists, typified by ex-President JIang Zemin’s Shanghai Mafia, representing the rapidly growing coastal areas of China, who favor more economic globalization. Then there are the populists of Youth League faction, among whom Hu and Wen are counted, and who are more concerned about social tensions and income disparities between the coast and the relatively disadvantaged inland and rural areas, where some 600,000 peasants still struggle to improve their livelihood.

Given the US policy of antagonizing China across the board, the succession process might be radicalized, and the People’s Liberation Army call for a broad-spectrum strategic counterpunch against the US might become reality. The State Department thinks that China will have to grin and bear it when it comes to US policies, no matter what they are. But China is now strong enough to have an array of other options.